Girl Testifies About Home Invasion Terror

A teenage girl testified Thursday how lunch at a friend’s house turned into hours of terror when several masked men bound the girls with duct tape and held them at gunpoint until the friend’s mother opened the vault at a bank she managed.

Tina Haddad, 19, identified Alex Yepes in San Fernando Superior Court as the captor she glimpsed through the stocking mask he wore.

She also described physical characteristics of some of the others assailants--one who was “built” and “bossy,” another who had “thin lips” and yet another with “small green eyes.”

Haddad admitted under cross-examination that she and six of her friends initially told the FBI that they had been blindfolded and had not seen her captors. She said they had agreed to say they couldn’t recognize the men because they had feared retaliation.

Haddad was the first witness in the trial of Yepes, 27, and brothers Brett and Chad Pelch, the 28- and 25-year-old sons of Los Angeles Police Sgt. Dennis Pelch.

The defendants, friends since boyhood, are charged with three dozen robbery, kidnapping and weapons offenses in connection with the June 10, 1993, home invasion and armed bank robbery in Canyon Country.

In addition, Yepes and Brett Pelch are accused of robbing a bank in Northridge three months later after holding the manager, her infant twins and their nanny at gunpoint in their Canoga Park home. The take from the two bank robberies was about $215,000.

In her opening statement, Deputy Dist. Atty. Susan Chasworth alleged that Yepes and Brett Pelch headed a highly sophisticated crime ring that broke into the homes of bank employees, took hostages overnight, forced the employees to open the vaults early the next morning, then spray-painted bank video cameras. They sometimes cheated accomplices and spent lavishly, Chasworth said.

The prosecutor described Yepes as the “mastermind,” Brett Pelch as the “enforcer” and Chad Pelch as a “weak link” considered so “stupid” by the others that he wasn’t asked to participate in the second bank robbery.

At the center of the case is Darren Patrick Towers, a former insider who turned informant. Defense attorneys have launched a vigorous attack against Towers’ credibility.

The trial promises to be so contentious that Judge Charles Peven already has cautioned the lawyers against making it “a spitting contest” that would reinforce what he called the public’s already low opinion of lawyers.

One defense lawyer called Towers “an opportunistic liar,” and another labeled him “walking reasonable doubt.”

Yepes was acquitted of federal bank robbery charges, then quickly charged with violations of state law, despite protestations of double jeopardy. Again, he will employ an alibi defense, said his lawyer, Gerald V. Scotti.

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Scotti says Yepes can prove he was at a Jethro Tull concert at the time one of the home invasions took place and was under FBI surveillance at the time of the subsequent home invasion and bank robbery, alleging instead that Towers was responsible and is fingering Yepes to save himself.

The evidence will include tales of life on the lam and lavish spending sprees.

Prosecutor Chasworth said Yepes, Brett Pelch and Towers went to a Club Med in Cancun, Mexico, after the first robbery, but left for Las Vegas when the weather was bad. The defendants bought new cars and trucks and other luxuries, she said.

Before that, she said, Brett Pelch was on the brink of bankruptcy, living off his five credit cards that were “maxed out,” Chasworth said.

He was arrested in Pacific Grove, near Monterey, after running from the law for 18 months.